Authorities in the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council forcibly evicted more than 600 Muslim families from their land in Hojai, saying the families, including Kulsuma’s, had encroached upon government land.
In February 2017, the government informed the Assam assembly that about 3,481 families were evicted from 13 districts.
Indrajit Bezbaruah, an associate professor at Assam’s Lumding College, saidt hose evicted were either internally displaced persons from flood-affected areas, IDPs from ethnic conflict-ridden Bodoland districts, or the local landless peasants belonging to the indigenous Kachari Muslim community settled in the area since the 1970s.
Assam has 362,450 landless families spread across 31 of its 33 districts, Forest Minister Pramila Rani Brahma told the state assembly in February last year.
Suprakash Talukdar, a leader of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, alleged that Assam government has not conducted any land settlement survey since 1965, which has denied land to the landless and kept them vulnerable to forced evictions.
Bhabesh Kalita, Minister of State for Revenue and Disaster Management in Assam said his government was working to rehabilitate those displaced by erosion.
Muslim IDPs in Assam carry an additional risk of being stripped of their citizenship rights, according to Guwahati-based activist Hafiz Ahmed.
